The TARDIS lands on Iceworld, an enormous shopping complex on Svartos.
There, the Doctor and Mel meet up with a time-displaced teenaged waitress
from Earth named Ace and their old friend Sabalom Glitz. Glitz is
searching for the treasure of the legendary Dragon who is supposed to
dwell beneath Iceworld. But when the Doctor joins Glitz in his quest, they
discover more than they bargained for, unearthing the millennia-old secret
of Kane, Iceworld's murderous ruler.

Production

Ian Briggs had studied drama at Manchester University and worked as a
crewmember in theatre before becoming involved with the BBC's Script
Unit. There he met Andrew Cartmel who, in January 1987, became script
editor of Doctor Who. Briggs was one of the young writers invited
by Cartmel to pitch for Doctor Who, but his original idea was
cliched and derivative, rather than exhibiting the novel approach the
script editor wanted. Cartmel asked Briggs to try again, and indicated
that he was looking for a story which was entirely studiobound. This was
because it had now been decided that the final six episodes of Season
Twenty-Four would consist of two three-part serials -- one made on
location, the other in studio, and both by the same team. The
location-based adventure would be Delta And The
Bannerman, written by Briggs' Script Unit colleague Malcolm
Kohll.

This time, Briggs came up with an idea entitled “Absolute
Zero” about a fourteen-year-old financial genius and his sidekick,
Mr Spewey, who seek a treasure -- revealed to be a living creature -- in
the depths of an ice planet. Cartmel was sufficiently happy with the core
of Briggs' proposal to commission a storyline on March 9th, but disliked
its more overtly farcical elements, especially since Delta And The Bannermen already had a comic
bent. Consequently, Briggs developed the sinister Hess as the new
villain of his piece. He also considered less on-the-nose titles such as
“Pyramid In Space” and “The Pyramid's Treasure”,
reflecting the new setting of a frozen, pyramid-shaped space station which
would be revealed as a massive warship. At this point, the Doctor secretly
allowed Hess to reactivate the vessel: once it moved out of the shadow
cast by the planet it orbited, the sun's rays caused Hess to melt.

The potential new companion, Alf, was an
independent-minded teenager whisked away from modern-day London by a
time storm

Meanwhile, throughout the first half of 1987, there was doubt as to
whether Bonnie Langford would continue to play Mel into Season
Twenty-Five. To this end, on January 26th, an outline for a potential
new companion was issued. This character was nicknamed Alf, and was
described as an independent-minded teenager who was whisked away from
modern-day London by a time storm. Briggs was shown a copy of the
outline, but was asked not to use Alf in “The Pyramid's
Treasure” due to the uncertainty regarding Langford's status.

Nonetheless, elements of Alf fed into Briggs' conception of Ace; at the
time, he was tutoring drama at Questors Youth Theatre, and the name came
from the slang he heard his students speaking. In particular, three
girls from Perivale named Anna-Marie, Joanne and Juno fuelled Ace, as
did Judy Garland's performance as Dorothy Gale in the 1939 feature film
The Wizard Of Oz. (Indeed, Briggs' notes indicated that Ace's
real name was “Dorothy Gale”, although her surname was never
stated onscreen.) The production team took note of Ace as one possible
replacement for Mel, along with the Welsh tomboy Ray whom Kohll had
created for Delta And The Bannermen. Should
Langford opt to leave Doctor Who at the end of Season
Twenty-Four, it was decided that either one could be positioned as the
year's final story, and rewritten to have Ace or Ray leave with the
Doctor.

Briggs was asked to script the first episode of his adventure, now
referred to as Dragonfire, on April 2nd. The name change was
necessitated by the decision to replace the orbiting Pyramid with the
Iceworld complex situated on the planet Svartos (originally Tartros),
which would be easier to realise. At this stage, Nathan-Turner suggested
that Briggs replace his pirate character Razorback (also referred to as
Swordfish) with the very similar Sabalom Glitz, who had been introduced
the previous year in The Trial Of A Time Lord
(Segment One). Parts two and three of Dragonfire were
commissioned on April 13th. Some consideration had been given to making
both Delta And The Bannermen and
Dragonfire as Serial 7F, but by now it had been decided that
Briggs' story would be classified as Serial 7G.

Ace's debt to The Wizard Of Oz was not the only element of
Dragonfire which referenced cinematic history. When the news
broke that Nazi war criminal Rudolph Hess was petitioning for release
from prison, Briggs renamed his villain Kane, after the ruthless
businessman and politician Charles Foster Kane from the 1941 Orson Welles
classic Citizen Kane. Similarly, Hess' accomplice Krylla became
Xana, after Charles Foster Kane's estate Xanadu. Briggs also made
reference to Russian actor/director Vsevolod Pudovkin, Hungarian critic
Béla Balázs, German critic Siegfried Kracauer, German-American
critic Rudolph Arnheim, and French critic André Bazin. Bazin's
partner was originally called Eisenstein (after Russian director Sergei
Eisenstein) but when it was feared that the surfeit of foreign names might
be construed as racism, this was changed to McLuhan (for Canadian mass
media theorist Herbert Marshall McLuhan).

Even more references were ultimately eliminated or went unacknowledged
on-screen: another mercenary was named after American critic Andrew
Sarris, Ace's boss was called Anderson for British director Lindsay
Anderson, and a tannoy announcement referenced American critic Pauline
Kael. Movies also gave rise to the Iceworld cafeteria (inspired by the Mos
Eisley cantina in 1977's Star Wars) and the holographic messages
from the dead (which mirror Jor El's message to his son in the 1978
version of Superman). The name of Glitz's spaceship and the
manner of Kane's death both alluded to the 1922 horror film Nosferatu,
Eine Symphonie Des Grauens (that is, Nosferatu, A Symphony Of
Horror).

One substantial change made to Dragonfire as Briggs worked on his
scripts involved Ace's relationship with Kane. Originally, she chose to
join him as a mercenary, with his sovereign becoming permanently
imprinted on her palm. Ace then rebelled only when ordered to kill Mel.
However, these developments were felt to be too similar to Belazs' arc. A
stuffed dog companion for Ace, called Wayne, was also dropped. Briggs had
maintained the Doctor's trait of mixing up proverbs, heard throughout the
other stories of Season Twenty-Four, but Nathan-Turner and Cartmel had now
decided to tone down some of the Seventh Doctor's more overtly comedic
traits, and so these were removed.

The role of Ace went to Sophie Aldred, who had originally
put herself forward for Ray in Delta And The
Bannermen

Like Delta And The Bannermen,
Dragonfire would be directed by Chris Clough, who was responsible
for casting the roles of Ace and Ray. The finalists for Ace were Sophie
Aldred (who had originally put herself forward for Ray, since the part
required the ability to ride a scooter, and Aldred could drive a
motorcycle) and Cassie Stuart; both were invited back for a second
audition on May 26th, this time with Nathan-Turner in attendance. The job
went to Aldred: her first in television, having mainly appeared in cabaret
and children's theatre after studying drama at Manchester University.
Around the same time, she was also hired as the host of the children's
programme Corners, which would begin recording in late
September.

By June, there was still no firm word from Langford's agent as to whether
his client would continue with Doctor Who. Nathan-Turner suggested
that Mel could be written out halfway through Season Twenty-Five, while
the actress responded with an offer to appear in the first serial only.
Finally, Nathan-Turner decided to write Mel out at the end of the current
season, and he and Cartmel concurred that Ace would provide a better
contrast than Ray as the new companion. As such, on June 17th Aldred was
contracted for Dragonfire, with options for the entirety of Season
Twenty-Five and eight episodes of Season Twenty-Six.

Recording on Dragonfire began with a three-day block in BBC
Television Centre Studio 1 from Tuesday, July 28th. On this first day,
Nathan-Turner and Aldred agreed that the actress would indeed appear in
Season Twenty-Five. The freezer centre set was in use throughout the
session (albeit only to remount some material involving Glitz on the
30th, since it had been realised that Tony Selby's sideburns were too
dark on the first day). On the 28th, work also began on scenes in the
cryogenics chamber which continued through to the following day. Taping on
the 29th then proceeded with sequences in the restricted zone, the
flight cabin of the Nosferatu, Ace's quarters, and Kane's control
room. Cameras were again rolling on the latter on the 30th, as well as
the refreshment bar and the docking bays.

With the change in the TARDIS crew now confirmed, Briggs rewrote the final
scene of Dragonfire. Originally, the Doctor seemingly ignored Mel's
pleas to take Ace along in the TARDIS with them, because he had deduced
that Razorback intended to invite her to travel the stars in the
Nosferatu II. At McCoy's suggestion, the new dialogue incorporated
elements of the script which Cartmel had written for the actors
auditioning to play the Seventh Doctor. In addition, on August 3rd, Briggs
signed a legal document relinquishing any copyright claim on Ace.

Obscure stage directions and ineffective camera angles
resulted in one of Doctor Who's most
infamous and literal cliffhangers

Work on Dragonfire continued with two days -- Wednesday, August
12th and Thursday the 13th -- in TC3 for all of the material in the
caverns beneath Iceworld, with the concluding TARDIS sequence also taped
on the 12th. Amongst the scenes recorded on the 13th was the conclusion
to episode one. As originally conceived, the Doctor was supposed to be
following the map, only to find himself at the end of a passage; he then
tried to scale the ice wall because he had nowhere else to go.
Unfortunately, a combination of obscurity in the stage directions and
ineffective camera angles would leave viewers with the impression that the
Doctor has spontaneously decided to dangle himself over a precipice for no
good reason -- making this one of the most infamous and literal
cliffhangers in Doctor Who history. August 13th was also the day
that a photocall was held to announce Sophie Aldred as the programme's
latest companion.

Briggs' early drafts of Dragonfire had been very lengthy, and
despite Cartmel's efforts to bring them down to size, all three episodes
still needed extensive editing in post-production. One substantial loss
was a pair of scenes intended for episode one, in which Glitz accidentally
triggered a trap in the corridors beneath Iceworld and had to be rescued
by the Doctor. A cut from part three resulted in the loss of a reference
to Iceworld customer Joanne Foxley, alluding to one of the girls who had
helped inspire Ace. This would have come over the public address system;
voicing the announcer was Lynn Gardner, who had originally been cast as
Ray in Delta And The Bannermen, but had to
withdraw due to an injury. To make up for this, Clough invited her to
work on Dragonfire instead.

In late August, John Nathan-Turner was informed that
Doctor Who was being renewed for its
twenty-fifth season

After leaving Doctor Who, Bonnie Langford suffered through a long
period of typecasting during the Nineties before her 2006 appearance in
the reality competition Dancing On Ice helped reinvigorate her
career. She went on to perform in a number of high-profile musicals,
including Chicago and Spamalot. She also continued to make
occasional television appearances, such as Agatha Christie's
Marple and EastEnders. And Langford would periodically return
to the role of Mel, appearing in the thirtieth-anniversary celebration
Dimensions In Time, as well as several
Doctor Who audio plays for Big Finish Productions beginning with
The Fires Of Vulcan in 2000. Dragonfire was also Tony
Selby's final appearance in Doctor Who. Amongst his many
subsequent television credits were Mulberry, Love Hurts,
The Detectives and Burnside.

In late August, shortly after recording wrapped on Season Twenty-Four,
Nathan-Turner was informed by the BBC that Doctor Who was being
renewed for its twenty-fifth season. Although the producer had been keen
to move on to new projects, he was excited by the prospect of the silver
anniversary, and agreed to remain on Doctor Who for an
eighth season. However, as Season Twenty-Four unfolded on television
screens, the weak ratings of 1986 continued to plague the programme, not
helped by bruising competition from Coronation Street. Having
courted the fans ever since he became producer, Nathan-Turner now found
more and more of them demanding his replacement -- a development which
did not go unnoticed by the British tabloid press. As Dragonfire
part three brought the season to a close on December 7th, it was hard to
quell the feeling that Doctor Who would be reaching the
quarter-century mark under a cloud...